Lois Lerner had yet another personal email account used to conduct some IRS business, the tax agency confirmed in a new court filing late Monday that further complicates the administration’s efforts to be transparent about Ms. Lerner’s actions during the tea party targeting scandal.

The admission came in an open-records lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm that has sued to get a look at emails Ms. Lerner sent during the targeting.

The Status Report (embed below) discloses, in relevant part:

On August 24, 2015, the Internal Revenue Service (“Service”) released to Judicial Watch, Inc., a CD containing documents responsive to Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request for Lois Lerner communications regarding the review and approval process for 501(c)(4) applications….

In the process of preparing this status report and for the August 24, 2015, release of Lerner communications, the undersigned attorneys learned that, in addition to emails to or from an email account denominated “Lois G. Lerner” or “Lois Home,” some emails responsive to Judicial Watch’s request may have been sent to or received from a personal email account denominated “Toby Miles.” The undersigned attorneys contacted the Office of IRS Chief Counsel, and IRS Chief Counsel attorneys informed the undersigned attorneys that these denominations refer to a personal email account used by Lerner. (See Pl.’s Mot. for Status Conf., 15 n.8 (Docket No. 20-2) (noting that the Congressional database includes documents that Lerner’s attorneys provided from Lerner’s “personal home computer and email on her personal email” account(s)).)

The Washington Times Quotes Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch, as follows:

“It is simply astonishing that years after this scandal erupted we are learning about an account Lois Lerner used that evidently hadn’t been searched”

I have confirmed with Judicial Watch that this was the first mention of the Toby Miles account.

BONUS Questions: Who is Toby Miles? And why did Lois Lerner use that name for her secret email account?

Comments

Is it really “astonishing” as Fitton claims? We are learning it is pretty much the status quo that people in position of power in this administration conduct business in a clandestine way. And I’m not so naive as to think this is a first, either.

Check your cis-normative gender bias.
Zir could be identifying as a gender neutral pansexual two-spirit skoliosexual that thinks of zirself as a transitioning species fluid dolphin for all you know. j/k

On the surface, this one would be innocent, …if it had been disclosed at the very front of the scandal. You know before the congressional hearings.

I’m getting rather annoyed at being told “the man” is out to get every protected victim class there is, while watching footage of some of these protected classes commit crimes and prosecution of those crimes would be racist… while at the same time seeing footage of “the man’ actually out to get people for their political views.

I don’t see how this trend we are on can possibly continue for very long nor end well.

I disagree (that it could be innocent), it is a federal statute that all work communications flow through systems that are archived. This is necessary for a number of reasons, including FOIA (this case).

If the IRS says that FOIA-covered communications (i.e. work related) emails are going through a private account then by definition this violates the statute. Exactly the same issue as EPA administrator Lisa Jackson.

But no one ever goes to jail. They know they can get away with it so they keep doing it. It will take a few stays at Club-Fed in order to break appointees of this behavior.

I think it’s obvious that on the presumption that when trouble starts, investigators are going to presume a private email address exists, and will demand it, that a perpetrator wishing to cover her tracks establishes two personal accounts for business use. The first is used for innocuous messages; that’s th one that she will give up when asked for it (like the dummy wallet or wad of one dollar bills the victim of a stick-up might surrender). The second is used for the dirty work. The first, red-herring address, is meant to satisfy investigators that they are aware of the subject’s personal account so they don’t go snooping for another.

This takes forethought and an understanding that what you’re undertaking isn’t legal. There’s no other reason for the deception except to conceal activity that’s not kosher. (or, these days, halal).

Gowdy has every talent needed to make the case ecxcept for one thing. He too has DC-itis and listens to the party leadership. So even he is timid in bringing an avalanche of subpoenas and contempt charges. So few have the cajones. That’s why Trump resonates and Cruz rises in the polls.

“The use of secret or extra email accounts has bedeviled the Obama administration, …”

Bedeviled them, has it — in what way? In that the administration didn’t get away with it? The sentence makes it appear that, gosh darn it, those pesky secret email accounts kept popping up despite the best efforts of fearless leaders to put an end to them.

Whereas we all know that the secret email accounts were an integral part of how the administration operated. They were used precisely to keep their dealings out of the public record.

Her use of the mysterious account has prompted speculation into the source of the name. “Toby Miles,” according to a former Lerner colleague, is the name of Lerner’s dog: Toby is the dog’s name, and Miles is the surname of Lerner’s husband, Michael Miles.

Next question: Does Valerie Jarrett have a dog, and does it have an email address? Also, does the first dog (“Bo”) have an email address? Some little birds would like to know.